In today's home and business environment there are many different types of digital networks that allow processing systems to communicate and transmit data between one another. As the size of these networks increases, more routers or other switching systems are needed in the network to transmit data between processing systems. Some systems are so large that some routers have interfaces that are connected directly to other routers to transmit data over the other routers to other systems.
One method for determining a path for transmitting data from one processing system over the network to another system is Open Shortest Path First (OSPF). In OSPF, a router receives Link State Advertisements (LSA) from other routing systems. Each LSA indicates a connection of a router to another system or router. A router then stores the received LSAs and uses the LSAs to determine the path over which to transmit data to a particular address. In the larger networks, the connections between routers are used to transmit data. However, the addresses of the interfaces that connect a router to another router are not needed. Thus, transmitting LSAs with the addresses of these interfaces is a problem. The addresses of the interfaces are installed in Router Information Base (RIB) of other routers when received in an LSA. This wastes router resources as the addresses are stored in the RIB and then the router advertises the link.
Another problem with advertising the addresses for these interfaces is that an attacker can launch an attack on the network by sending packets to one of these interfaces. Thus, there is a need in the art for a system to hide these interfaces from the network to improve convergence of the network and to increase security.